The Odaka “Wild Horse Catching” event was traditionally an offering of wild horses from local samurai lords to the local temple, where they would be kept as assets. The problem is, they must have run out of wild horses pretty quickly.

This weekend was the Sendai Tanabata Festival, which is kind of a big deal. We’re lucky to be in Sendai for it, so our friends Abigail & Shelly came up from the Fukushima coast to make a weekend of it. And did we ever!

When we were going to the samurai races, I was expecting a few old guys wearing their grandfather’s old helmet having a bit of a trot around a paddock. I was not expecting several hundred dudes on horseback, decked out in full regalia.

It was my birthday on the weekend, and Alice managed to outdo last year’s deep sea party by negotiating with the regional government to hold the yearly samurai festival in my honour. It started off with a street festival, or matsuri.